Death happens. Why not make it interesting?
The online competition to guess which famous people won't make it to the end of the current year. If they're elderly, ill, or just live a high-risk lifestyle, stick 'em in your team, and for each one whose death you correctly predict, you'll score points. DDP was dreamt up in Derby, England (hence the name...) by Big Iain back in 1996. Other hosts: Siegfried Baboon and Rude Kid (2003-7), Octopus of Odstock (2008-9), The Man in Black (2010-17), Spade Cooley (2018-19), msc (2020-21), Grim Up North (2020-22), and Reptile (2020-23). Now the Committee of DI (2022), time (2024), and Banana (2023) oversee the biggest deadpool going...
A CUNNING PICK Astronaut Walter Cunningham has died aged 90. One of NASA’s earliest civilian astronauts, he was on the backup crew for the abortive Apollo 1, which ended in tragedy when a fire killed the main crew. NASA held off on manned missions for over a year, eventually resuming with Apollo 7, where Cunningham […]
CAMPBELL’S SOUP Another year, another “quick hit based off the last-minute “hospice” search” obit. Baseballer Bill Campbell played for a menagerie of teams over his 14-year career, and reached his pinnacle under the Boston Red Sox, where he was deemed an All-Star in 1977. He was 74 and didn’t even need to resort to Yahoo […]
THE DICK SAVITT NO-SHOW Tennis player Dick Savitt has died aged 95. His first love was basketball, but his aspirations for the hoops were quashed by a knee injury and rerouted him to the racket. He won Wimbledon in 1951 and made history as the first Jewish player to do so. Other trophies include three […]
HEAVENS TO BESSIE November 1907: The first free flight of a helicopter occurred, Oklahoma was admitted as a state, Louis B. Mayer opened up his first theatre, and one Bessie Hendricks came into this world. The oldest living American until her death, our geriatric Iowan was the latest in a long line of 110 Clubbers […]
MIRREN PLAYER JOINS SAINTS For the third year in a row, a canon competitive pick checks out hours after the New Year rings in. While Floyd Little and Gary Burgess were both in full “will he or won’t he” deathwatch mode, Scottish footballer Frank McGarvey instead was a classic case of “he was going to […]
So that was 2022. Putin shot to the top of many a wishful thinking list, BoJo was succeeded by a fuckwit who couldn’t outlast a lettuce, and Musk flushed 44 billion buckaroos down the toilet so Twitter would stop laughing at him. They didn’t. Above all else, it will be remembered as the year Queen […]
COHEN DOWN And so the Boys of ‘66 finalists tally falls down to two with the death of George Cohen. A right-backer, his playstyle was noted for its power and defensive prowess. He had been a stalwart at the club level with Fulham, but his international career was off to an inconspicuous start that might’ve […]
FALLEN The musical voice of David Lynch’s worlds, Julee Cruise, died earlier this year, now it’s time for his soundtrack to follow suit with the death of Angelo Badalamenti, aged 85. On this form, apologies in advance to any Bobby Vinton fans. Badalamenti had been active in the music business for years, working with reputed […]
GET ROTTER Director Mike Hodges has died aged 90. After several years of directing TV, his first turn at directing a feature film proved his finest, helming gritty gangster classic Get Carter. Along the way he also directed cult favourite Flash Gordon, and concluded his career with I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. Well, he’s sleeping […]
THE BUTLER BIT IT It’s not the end of a DDP year without a LotL athlete being salvaged by that last-chance saloon we call the Sports Personality of the Year In Memoriam. The lucky customer this time is golfer Peter Butler, who died in October aged 90. He was one of the preeminent British golfers […]
